Robert Edwards, the British pioneer of IVF treatment, sits with Jack and Sophie Emery, two of his in vitro babies, in 1998 in London. / Alastair Grant, AP

by Robin Webb, USA TODAY

by Robin Webb, USA TODAY

Nobel Prize winner Sir Robert Edwards, a pioneer of in vitro fertilization (IVF) research, which culminated in the highly controversial birth of the first "test tube" baby in the late 1970s, died Wednesday at his home in Cambridge, England. He was 87.

Edwards, who began working on fertilization techniques in the 1950s, concluded that eggs fertilized by sperm in a laboratory could be a viable solution to human infertility issues.

Edwards and the late Dr. Patrick Steptoe were able to bring their research to fruition with the 1978 birth of Louise Brown.

Brown was conceived using sperm from her father, John, and an egg from her mother, Lesley. The embryo was eventually implanted in Lesley's womb and carried to term. The Browns had tried unsuccessfully for nine years to conceive prior to Louise's birth.

Since then, data show more than 4 million babies have been born worldwide using IVF, but not without ongoing controversy.

"(Edwards) was an extraordinary scientist," said Peter Braude, emeritus professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Kings College London, who was at Cambridge when Edwards and Steptoe were developing IVF. "There was such hysteria around the kind of work he was doing."

Religious leaders and other opponents characterized conception outside the womb abnormal, and the Vatican has been extremely vocal in its objection to IVF.

For his part, Edwards remained resolute in the face of criticism.

"Ethicists decried us, forecasting abnormal babies, misleading the infertile and misrepresenting our work as really acquiring human embryos for research," he wrote in the biomedical research journal Nature Medicine in 2001.

When Edwards was awarded a Nobel prize in 2010 for his work on IVF, the Roman Catholic Church denounced the Nobel award, arguing that human life should only begin through intercourse and not artificially. The Vatican said Edwards "bore a moral responsibility for all subsequent developments in assisted reproduction technology and for all abuses made possible by IVF.

"(Edwards) only had the best motivation," Braude said. "There are few biologists that have done something so practical and made a huge difference for the entire world."

He was "like a granddad to me," Louise Brown said of Edwards in a 2008 interview with the BBC.

"If it wasn't for Bob Edwards and Patrick Steptoe, I wouldn't have this family," Louise's mother said in the same interview.

"The most important thing in life is having a child. ... Nothing is more special than a child," Edwards was widely quoted as saying. "(Patrick) Steptoe and I were deeply affected by the desperation felt by couples who so wanted to have children. We had a lot of critics but we fought like hell for our patients."

Edwards is survived by his wife, Ruth, five daughters and 11 grandchildren.